Western Antarctica Melting

[Astro_Bot]

Originally Posted by Renato1

Interesting article today from the apparently evil Murdoch press,
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...1226942126322#

"AUSTRALIA’S peak body of earth scientists has declared itself unable to publish a position statement on climate change due to the deep divisions within its membership on the issue.

After more than five years of debate and two false starts, Geological Society of Australia president Laurie Hutton said a statement on climate change was too difficult to achieve.

Mr Hutton said the issue “had the potential to be too divisive and would not serve the best interests of the society as a whole."…

GSA represents more than 2000 Australian earth scientists from academe, industry, government and research organisations…

The [GSA’s present] statement said: “Geological evidence clearly demonstrates that Earth’s climate system is inherently and naturally variable over timescales from decades to millions of years…

“The GSA makes no predictions or public policy recommendations for action on climate beyond the generally agreed need for prudent preparations in response to potential hazards, including climate change.”

Ah, the Geological Society of Australia. Not the CSIRO (Australia's peak scientific body on climate change) that has repeatedly published findings in strong support of climate change science? And the rest of the world's peak scientific bodies that agree strongly with climate change science? Did you conveniently forget about them, too?

Who'd have thought?
Cheers,
Renato

Who'd have thought it'd be the Murdoch press printing something like that, eh?

HOWEVER: I do encourage everyone to read the linked article in full, as Renato's edit is disingenious to say the least!

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by Astro_Bot

Come on, chaps, settle down. Trying to link anti-catholicism to "left-wing" media and the ABC is a long bow, a bit of a distraction, and not really on the topic of climate change, or indeed of melting west Antarctic ice sheets. Oh, wait a minute, that was Renato making that claim! Whatever next?

I'd be interested to know which particular media outlets Renato considers "left-wing" and why? (My initial guess would be anything to the "left" of Renato, which sounds like a lot! )

It was not me that twice attacked our Prime Minister in this thread for his religious practice.

But yes, it was me that called it for what it was.
Regards,
Renato

P.S. - I'm still a member of my Association/Trade Union. I was even a Workplace Rep. Part of the fees go to the ALP. I'm a great believer in Unions, though not of those willing to trash their member's jobs for the sake of Green philosophy.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

hate quoting wikipedia but feeling lazy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...d_by_News_Corp

[Renato1 (Renato)]

Originally Posted by Nikolas

It's obvious that when you paint yourself into a corner all sense of intelligent discourse fails you. It's a pity because if you had just been honest in your answers rather than resort to dictionary meanings then it would not have come to this.
I take it all back you are not clever at all.
Pity.

Plainly you haven't been trained in the Public Service. In order to avoid ambiguity, we are required to take our meanings from the Macquarie Dictionary (though it was the Oxford when I first joined).

A discussion of what I feel a term means, versus it's actual defined Dictionary meaning, is a nugatory exercise which is quite frankly meaningless. But you seem to state that a person's honesty is in question if he uses precise definitions.

Two world views here.
Regards,
Renato

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Originally Posted by Renato1

It was not me that twice attacked our Prime Minister in this thread for his religious practice.

But yes, it was me that called it for what it was.
Regards,
Renato

P.S. - I'm still a member of my Association/Trade Union. I was even a Workplace Rep. Part of the fees go to the ALP. I'm a great believer in Unions, though not of those willing to trash their member's jobs for the sake of Green philosophy.

"What would Jesus do in relation to asylum seekers," a young man asked Tony Abbott on the ABC's Q&A program.
Abbott struggled for an analogy. He tried a small joke then said, "Don't forget Jesus drove the traders from the temple as well," he said.
"What's the point of that?" said host Tony Jones? "I mean," added Abbott, "Jesus didn't say yes to everyone."
Jesus knew there was a place for everything. It is not necessary everyone's place to come to Australia.
According to the Bible, Jesus Christ was born in a stable when there was no room for his mother to give birth at a local 'inn'. His family were considered refugees as they were forced from their native homeland Bethlehem.

Define Green Philosophy

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Originally Posted by Renato1

Plainly you haven't been trained in the Public Service. In order to avoid ambiguity, we are required to take our meanings from the Macquarie Dictionary (though it was the Oxford when I first joined).

A discussion of what I feel a term means, versus it's actual defined Dictionary meaning, is a nugatory exercise which is quite frankly meaningless. But you seem to state that a person's honesty is in question if he uses precise definitions.

Two world views here.
Regards,
Renato

So you can't answer the question as put to you.
Edit: maybe dishonest is too harsh, I suggest disingenuous

[N1 (Mirko)]

Originally Posted by Renato1

Hi Graham,
You are correct - it is the money. If you are going to spend trillions of dollars playing at being planetary engineers, and keep billions of people around the world in poverty, and impoverish you future descendents, you would want to be pretty sure that what you are acting on is correct.
[...]

Money just changes hands. It's man made & arbitrary. When it comes to the crunch, it becomes worthless anyway. My future descendants might have a pile of it but nothing to buy for it. The planet's ability to sustain human life, on the other hand, can actually be physically lost or severely compromised. Not one second would I debate which of the two I would risk losing, regardless of the odds.

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Renato1

P.S. - I'm still a member of my Association/Trade Union. I was even a Workplace Rep. Part of the fees go to the ALP. I'm a great believer in Unions, though not of those willing to trash their member's jobs for the sake of Green philosophy.

Another shot at Tassie mate? Strangely enough, a hell of a lot of trade unionists are in favour of fighting climate change, me, and my union included.

Outdated and backward thinking tries to retain industries and attitudes that are obsolete. Those num-nums who retain the "Chop it down, dig it up and pollute it" exploitation mentality need to evolve. New GREEN technologies are growing around the world but His HolyArse is doing everything possible to destroy them in Australia. So much for the "clever country".

What does it say when timber workers, those evil greenies and a hell of a lot of other people stand together to protect our forests and then liberals set out to restart the conflict that WE the people resolved? Ideology driven scumbags

[Astro_Bot]

As I get the sense that it's not long before this thread is closed, may I suggest one thing (and my apologies if everyone would have done this anyway): Whatever our opinions or view points, or how strongly we hold them, what has happened in this thread, stays in this thread.

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Agreed, our first love is the stars after all.
Renato no hard feelings mate

[el_draco (Rom)]

Originally Posted by Astro_Bot

Whatever our opinions or view points, or how strongly we hold them, what has happened in this thread, stays in this thread.

Ultimately, we are naught but star dust....

[andyc (Andy)]

Levitus was 2012, not 2008. You're pointing to a Nature news feature, rather than dealing with the substance of 700-2000m ocean heat content measurements either the IPCC AR5 or the measurements referenced in Levitus et al. But I guess they are an inconvenient truth for you! I could equally point to Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 or Kosaka and Xie 2013 (discussed in the Nature News article), showing that what appears to be a 'hiatus' is dominated by the expected natural variations of ENSO, and not a change in the long-term climate forcing.

That is also supported by the positive trend in El Nino years and La Nina years that extends through to the present day - 2010 was the hottest El Nino, and 2012 was the hottest La Nina. All La Nina events since 1998 are warmer than all El Ninos before 1997, I wonder why?

It's funny how Otto et al deals with transient climate response, not equilibrium sensitivity, and the author states that their work agrees with IPCC ECS estimates of 2-4.5C [and by extension the review of dozens of studies by Knutti and Hegerl 2008]. But I'm sure you knew that when you tried to convince me that there were soooo many papers that point to low climate sensitivity!

Ring et al, who are one of few studies on the low side for an ECS estimate, state that "Although we believe, given our relatively low values for equilibrium climate sensitivity, that the 2˚C goal is attainable, we emphasize that steep emissions cuts must begin now in order to reach this goal".

I'm sure as you've referenced this paper, you'll heartily agree!

Nic Lewis' paper suffers from the problem that their estimate of climate sensitivity completely changes when you add just six years worth of data! This is pretty damning for a paper proposing to estimate a robust value.

I'll leave the discussion of Aldrin et al to the approving voice of a top class climate modeller Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate:

And then there are the recent papers examining the transient constraint. The most thorough is Aldrin et al (2012). The transient constraint has been looked at before of course, but efforts have been severely hampered by the uncertainty associated with historical forcings – particularly aerosols, though other terms are also important (see here for an older discussion of this). Aldrin et al produce a number of (explicitly Bayesian) estimates, their ‘main’ one with a range of 1.2ºC to 3.5ºC (mean 2.0ºC) which assumes exactly zero indirect aerosol effects, and possibly a more realistic sensitivity test including a small Aerosol Indirect Effect of 1.2-4.8ºC (mean 2.5ºC). They also demonstrate that there are important dependencies on the ocean heat uptake estimates as well as to the aerosol forcings. One nice thing that added was an application of their methodology to three CMIP3 GCM results, showing that their estimates 3.1, 3.6 and 3.3ºC were reasonably close to the true model sensitivities of 2.7, 3.4 and 4.1ºC.

I'll conclude with a note that nothing's personal. If I'm ever at the same star party, you're welcome to come say hi, look through the scope or whatever. Though you're desperately wrong about climate, it's your information that is desperately wrong (goes with trusting a British right-wing lobby group I guess), and nothing more than that.

Genuinely, clear skies!